Has anyone beat this on expert? Ive tried 2 player 3 times now and got absolutely destroyed. Im not complaining, I'm very glad it's difficult. It didn't help we used scorpion mod set, that guy is really nasty. Anybody beat it? If so what heroes and setup

Also his when revealed effect can seriously put you in as bad spot and did so all 3 games.

2 hours ago, wyrm187 said:

It didn't help we used scorpion mod set, that guy is really nasty.

Eesh, for real. My one qualm with the Goblin Expansion is that it doesn’t list a difficulty ranking for the modular encounters like the core set did. Even if I find the numbers to be a bit off (Masters of Evil is much harder solo than multiplayer IMO), it’s a good place to start.

I haven’t tried either Goblin on Expert yet, though. His standard difficulty is enough for me, and I’ve been enjoying the Sinister Sixish while I get a feel for the new hero builds. (On that note, while Rhino’s got some Hydra minions, I really want a Hydra villain for a truly epic Solo Cap game.)

Just did two solo games using Cap; first one was stages I-II (as this was my first go) then upgraded for the second play to II-III.

In the first game, it was a cakewalk, as stage I is basically as dangerous as Rhino, giving plenty of time to fully board build.

The II/III playthrough was far more interesting for the variable start. I got only some upgrades, and again the same on stage III; so once those were away, I was stabilized pretty easily to board build. I can imagine that being much worse (Ie immediate shadow of the past followed by gang ups or the like).

Key to victory was board building out my allies prior to the stage swap, delaying several turns just to ensure I had sufficient firepower, then burning through stage III over two turns. I suppose I could have pursued threat management (cap alone being able to remove up to 6 or 8 in a turn thanks to fearless determinations), but with 3 allies out, and an Avenger’s assemble, you can dish out 15 points off Falcon, Squirrel Girl, and Wonder Man (plus 8 more off cap). Making the race to the finish a plausible choice.

I beat it first time Expert solo using Spider-Man Aggression, which surprised me. Just using the Goblin Gimmicks recommended module. Might just have gotten lucky with the Encounter cards though. I’ve found both scenarios interesting though - just played the same Spider-Man Aggression deck into both scenarios on standard and expert with Goblin Gimmicks and haven’t had a chance to play it again since.

I played the Captain America pre-con solo last night against both scenarios, with both difficulties. Mutagen Formula was definitely significantly harder. Captain America seems incredibly strong to me. He handled the other three with relative ease, but Expert Mutagen Formula can have such a blistering start that I could see how bad flips could get out of control very quickly. I barely squeaked by (with 1 hp provided by an Honorary Avenger multiple times). I think there's gonna be some high variance between games, so it might be worth going back and just trying it again to see if you just got some brutal flips.

Shield toss was MVP. I think I got 4-5 guys twice with it, including clearing out his stage III transformation. Heroic Strike, too, I guess. That card's insane.

(Also, full disclosure, I may have made an error or two in gameplay. I can't remember for sure if I applied all acceleration tokens every time. There may have been a turn or two where I forgot a side-scheme, which would have turned a tight victory into defeat)

Haha, such a mood on “did I forget that effect” in solo play. It can get tough to keep track of so many things for so long.

Cap definitely felt like he’s a bit above the curve the couple times I’ve played him. He’s very consistently strong; being able to double-tap with his 2 Att or 2 Thw for one discard is kindof insane and gives him a lot of flexibility, and his kit is very strong too.

I also really like that Cap is a straightforward gameplay style that’s easier to play well, where Ms. Marvel is a lot tougher/more complicated to play well. She’s a much less experienced Hero, so it’s kindof cool that she’s almost an underdog, where Cap can go head-to-head with most villains no problem. And they manage to have that feel to them without the game feeling broken.

Yeah I can definitely agree on Ms Marvel. Her ability seems like it has a lot of potential as we get more event cards, but for solo play especially, she really seems like she has a lot of build-up time, and really needs to swap back and forth for the value on her supports. I found her spending most of her time just thwarting that scheming-threat right back off, and in real danger the turns I couldn't find a thwart. I think she'd be better with leadership and allies that you can play after flipping back to Kamala side. That way you'll have access to thwart more frequently, and can play more allies. Plus, if you mill Maria Hill, nobody's too broken up about it!

Thanks for the replies but is there anyone who has played multiplayer? I don't feel the game scales well solo (one handed anyways). There's more of a chance you draw a dud villain card, with 2 players there's more risk to get some really bad combos going and with gg's reaction, each player starts with 2 encounter cards and is drawing a third on turn one. There's alot of bad stuff that can happen right away. Let me know if anyone has beaten this other than solo. We got closer yesterday use Cap leadership and justice iron man.

55 minutes ago, wyrm187 said:

Thanks for the replies but is there anyone who has played multiplayer? I don't feel the game scales well solo (one handed anyways). There's more of a chance you draw a dud villain card, with 2 players there's more risk to get some really bad combos going and with gg's reaction, each player starts with 2 encounter cards and is drawing a third on turn one. There's alot of bad stuff that can happen right away. Let me know if anyone has beaten this other than solo. We got closer yesterday use Cap leadership and justice iron man.

I’ll try it out, but Iron Man is often played in a way as to be one of those early game liability characters. And, with only 9 hp out of the gate, it’s unlikely that he’ll want to be in hero form for those bonus encounter cards, which means Cap pretty well has to be, or you have a significant risk of moving to the second main scheme.

I did a Ms Marvel & Cap team up against Expert Goblin last night as well. Cap definitely pulled his weight there, and Ms Marvel took a *real* long time to get rolling, but eventually was able to help push damage through. We both used the precons. It was a bit hairy, but not nearly as rough as my Cap solo game.

The turn we flipped to stage 3, we had 9 encounter cards dealt and resolved. Fortunately, most of them were minions, and Cap's shield toss was only a turn away, I think.

Ok, I did a playthrough using Cap Default and Iron Man justice. As I was playing both hands, it was somewhat easier to plan out my strategy. Iron Man really slowed the team down for the first 3/4 of the game building out his suit and not really contributing much to the minion or scheme clearing...or even the upgrade clearing, ultimately allowing the Goblin to unleash the mutagen cloud on New York City.

Fortunately, once he was fully kitted out, Iron Man finally pulled his own weight, vaporizing the goblin. (Second to last round he did 18, and in the final round he did 26 points.)

Long story short, it’s doable, but you probably need at least two reliable heroes to make Iron Man’s exceptionally weak early game worth it. The best thing he did in the early game was to put a Heroic Intuition on Cap, and anyone using Justice could have done that. This wasn’t helped by the arc reactor and stark tower both being buried at the bottom of the first shuffle.

edit: And after a fair number of games I still haven’t gotten a Quinjet to fire on anything big. At most I’ve had them in play to get wonder man or Squirrel Girl.

Awesome, what modular set did you use?

6 hours ago, Derrault said:

This wasn’t helped by the arc reactor and stark tower both being buried at the bottom of the first shuffle.

Same exact thing happened to me in our 5-player attempt vs Gobby.

I will note—I missed it during the one game of Solo Protection Iron Man I tried—Energy Barriers do increase his Hero hand size. I just thought they’d be nice with Stark Tower, but he gets and extra card per tech item, not Iron Man upgrade. So once the other three aspects get a tech upgrade or two, it’ll be slightly easier to get him to Hero mode early if necessary.

I've only played this one once on expert.

It was Cap Leadership and Ms Marvel Justice vs E Mutagen w Gimmicks

I did not find it particularly challenging but I think there were a couple factors that made it easier.

- Leadership & Justice is overall super strong

- Captain America's Shield Toss is extremely good vs this scenario

- Goblin Gimmicks is definitely on the easy side. Due to GG's when revealed effect, I can see him scaling up significantly with harder modular sets.

On 12/29/2019 at 8:49 AM, wyrm187 said:

Awesome, what modular set did you use?

I was running the default for Mutagen Formula, Goblin Gimmicks.

One thing I liked about the mutagen scenario is just how jam packed it is with minions; it definitely ratchets up the tension for how difficult it can be to balance out clearing minions and threat, and board building.

On 12/29/2019 at 11:04 AM, SpiderMana said:

Same exact thing happened to me in our 5-player attempt vs Gobby.

I will note—I missed it during the one game of Solo Protection Iron Man I tried—Energy Barriers do increase his Hero hand size. I just thought they’d be nice with Stark Tower, but he gets and extra card per tech item, not Iron Man upgrade. So once the other three aspects get a tech upgrade or two, it’ll be slightly easier to get him to Hero mode early if necessary.

Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about the synergy there (just thinking about Protection Spider-Man paired up); it's unfortunate that Cap doesn't have tech cards in the prebuilt.